Froome quits Tour de France after crash

Britain's Christopher Froome gestures to his teammate Spain's Xabier Zandio, right, as he gets up after a third consecutive crash in two days prior to abandoning the race during the fifth stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 96.3 miles with start in Ypres, Belgium, and finish in Arenberg, France, Wednesday.

Froome fell even before the seven cobblestone
patches on the slick road from Ypres, Belgium, to Arenberg-Porte du
Hainaut in France. Riders had known months ago about the bone-jarring
course; incessant rain made it even more treacherous.

The withdrawal of the Team Sky leader left the race wide open with 16 stages still left.

Overall
race leader Vincenzo Nibali wasted little time in speeding ahead,
notably after he saw that his other big rival for the title this year,
two-time Tour victor Alberto Contador, had trouble on the second run on
cobbles.

Sensing the danger from the rain, race organizers
scrapped two of the nine scheduled cobblestone patches, and reduced the
stage by three kilometers (two miles). But that still wasn't enough to
stop many riders from tumbling.

Froome, already nursing pain in
his left wrist from a crash on Tuesday, took his third and last spill in
two days about halfway through the stage. With a cut under his right
eye, the Team Sky leader limped over to a team car, climbed in, and
drove away.

Froome tweeted he was "devastated" to have to
withdraw. "Injured wrist and tough conditions made controlling my bike
near to impossible," he wrote. He wished luck to new Sky leader Richie
Porte of Australia and his other teammates for the rest of the race.

"It's
devastating for Chris and for the team," Sky boss Dave Brailsford said.
"We really believed in Chris and his ability to win this race. But it's
not to be this year.

"When you have a day like today, when you
have a setback, you have to roll ahead and go again, you have to
recalibrate your goals. Richie Porte came on the Tour to be the team
leader No. 2, and he showed great ability to ride the cobbles the way he
did."

The last time a defending champion abandoned the Tour was
five-time winner Bernard Hinault of France in 1980, according to French
cycling statistics provider Velobs.com.

Nibali, too, was one of
several high-profile riders who crashed, recovered and excelled on the
152.5-kilometer (95-mile) route. The Italian finished third and extended
his lead. He and second-place Jakob Fuglsang of Denmark were 19 seconds
behind stage winner Lars Boom of the Netherlands.

"This is a
special, special day for me," said Boom, who rides for Belkin Pro
Cycling. "I was really looking forward to the cobblestones."

"We
have to be calm. The road to Paris is very long," he said. "Cycling is
made of crashes, and we have to take that into account."

Others
who went down but kept going included Americans Andrew Talansky and
Tejay van Garderen, Spain's Alejandro Valverde, and Germany's Marcel
Kittel, winner of three of the first four stages. In what was perhaps
the day's most visually dramatic crash, Belgium's Jurgen van den Broeck
went hurtling over his handlebars in a bend on a cobblestone patch, and
tumbled into a grassy roadside.

While the chaos on the course
raised questions about riding in such poor conditions -- critics in
social media had a field day -- it made for great racing imagery: Many
riders were caked in sloppy, wet mud on their faces and shins, their
biceps jiggling as they held their handlebars. A mix of sweat, rain, mud
and drool dropped from many chins. Many looked as if they'd ridden
through a shower of chocolate pudding.

The race heads to Champagne country on Thursday, with a mostly flat 120-mile run from Arras to Reims in Stage 6.

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